Condescending Philanthropy

[Steelhead]

davemarc digs deeper:

>It's disgusting that Steely, who knew of the Shoah project when he began
>resurrecting this debate, asks why Spielberg didn't document other stories
>or aspects of the Holocaust without even addressing the work on Shoah.
>Again:  Spielberg is documenting these stories, and he's using the momentum
>from Schindler's List to do so.  (After last night's television broadcast,
>more than 5,000 potential interview subjects called Shoah.)  If you're
>going to take the measure of Spielberg, you can't ignore the entire body
>and thrust of his work.  Same goes for Riefenstahl, whom Jeffrey St. Clair
>states has more heart than Spielberg.  Of the good Germans in Goldhagen's
>book who saw the good-hearted Riefenstahl's films, how many were then
>inspired to do any good?

I didn't criticize Spielberg for the stories he didn't tell; but for the
story he chose to tell, and the manipulative way he told it.

I don't give Spielberg that much credit for the Shoah project. For decades,
the oral histories were being collected by hundreds of real historians and
dozens of real film-makers, such as Claude Lanzman, capable of
contextualizing these stories.

My wife (a teacher, don't that beat all?)--who lost dozens of relatives to
the Nazi's at Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald, and knows far more about these
grim matters than I--denounces Speilberg's whiz-bang Shoah project as
displayed on computers at the Holocaust Museum in DC as "an offensive cyber
circus."

My attitude toward "charitable works" by folks such as Spielberg, Andrew
Carnegie and JP Morgan is guided by Michel Foucault, who in Madness and
Unreason (or the poorly translated "Madness and Civilization") warned of
"the malign uses of condescending philantropy."

Checked out the history of the Ford Foundation lately? Richard Romero might
be able to tell you a nasty tale or two.

A relavent example.

Speilberg funds a foundation in LA called the Environmental Media
Association. It gives out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in grants
to environmental groups, as long as those groups *don't oppose* the
destruction of Ballona. Condescending philanthropy at work. The head of the
EMA is also the PR director for--you guessed it--Dreamworks.

Another.

Ted Danson runs a group called American Oceans. It's top priority for the
past two years has been the preservation of coastal wetlands. The LA office
of American Oceans is only blocks away from Ballona, the largest coastal
wetland in southern California. American Oceans has not taken a position on
the Dreamworks Studio.  Why? It might have something to do with the fact
that Ted Danson's awful new sitcom, Inc., is the first Dreamworks TV
venture.

>From the very beginning, the body and thrust of Steven Spielberg's work has
been commercial exploitation--kiddy pornography. When he's aimed for
high-brow literary material it's been a travesty:  the Color Purple and
Empire of the Sun, are just two woeful examples. Thank god, David
Cronenberg has come along to do Ballard cinematic justice.

The "good Germans" in Goldhagen's book were the ones that plotted and
attempted to execute the White Rose Rebellion--they saw right through
Leni's veil of propaganda. Even so, they were rounded up, tortured and
executed in a most horrible manner. The details are told most starkly in
Lifton's The Nazi Doctors.

Didn't see any evidence of this kind of resistance in SL. It was an insipid
and grotesquely paternalistic story.

Steelhead

By the way, while the Dreamworks studio is now beginning to receive some
coverage, I believe the story Alexander Cockburn and I wrote 8 months ago
was the first major investigation into the darker aspects of this
development. For example, we were the first to reveal--among other
things--Spielberg's $50,000 donation to the presidential aspirations of
that racist Pete ("let's fence the border") Wilson, so that the Guv would
come through--as he did--with the tax abatements for the Dreamworks Studio.